Bf-109, Messerschmitt (Me 109)

The Bf109 was the Luftwaffe's standard fighter throughout WWII,
and the production of the Bf 109 was larger than that of any other
fighter. It was a quite revolutionary design, the smallest aircraft
that could be built around a powerful engine. Advantages were good
performance and handling, and a simple construction; disadvantages
were restricted vision, bad landing characteristics, and the
inability to carry heavy armament without adverse affects on handling.
The E was one of the best fighters in the world, on a par with the
Spitfire;
the F was a fine fighter with limited armament; the G
suffered from detoriated handling. The K was the last series-produced
model. Some extreme developments, elongated, with longer wings and
Jumo engines, never reached service. Projects to replace the 109 all
failed. Approx 35000 built. Czechoslovakaia and Spain continued
production of developments after WWII.

Messerschmitt Bf-109

The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was a World War II fighter aircraft designed by Willy Messerschmitt in the
early 1930s. It was the first true modern fighter of the era, including such features as an all-metal
monocoque construction, a closed canopy, and retractable landing gear.

The Bf 109 was the standard fighter of the Luftwaffe during much of World War Two, although it began
to be partially replaced by the Focke-Wulf Fw-190 from 1942. The Bf 109 scored more aircraft kills in
World War Two than any other Axis aircraft, and at various times served as an air superiority fighter,
an escort fighter, an interceptor, a ground-attack aircraft and a reconnaissance aircraft. The Bf 109
was also produced in greater quantities than any other Axis aircraft of the war and is the most produced
fighter aircraft in history, with over 31,000 units built. Although the Bf 109 had some weaknesses,
including a short range and troublesome landing gear, it stayed competitive with Allied fighter aircraft
until the end of the war.

Designation

Bf 109 was the official Reichsluftfahrtministerium (the German Air Ministry) designation, since the
design was sent in by the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke company. Because the company was renamed to
Messerschmitt, some late-war aircraft actually carried the Me 109 designation stamped onto their
aircraft type plates. Me 109 was the name used officially by the Luftwaffe propaganda publications as
well as by the Messerschmitt company and the Luftwaffe personnel, who pronounced it 'may hundred-nine'.
ME 109 (pronounced 'emm ee one-oh-nine') was the contemporary English interpretation of the designation.
However, in both wartime and contemporary literature, both the "Bf" and "Me" prefixes are used, and
both are considered valid and accurate.

Design Features

Messerschmitt had already designed much of the Bf 109 by this point. Like the Bf 108, the new design
was based on Messerschmitt's "lightweight construction", which essentially aimed to reduce the total
number of strong parts in the aircraft as much as possible. One of the more notable examples of this
was the mounting of all structural points to a strong firewall at the front of the cockpit, including
the wing spars, engine mounts and landing gear. In more conventional designs these would be mounted to
different points on the aircraft, with a framework distributing the load among them.

Another notable advantage of this design was that, since the landing gear was attached to the fuselage
itself, it was possible to completely remove the wings of the aircraft for major servicing, if necessary,
leaving the fuselage intact sitting on the landing gear. However, this had one major drawback - such a
landing gear arrangement ensured a very narrow track (the distance between the main tyres) which thus
made the plane very unstable in terms of balance while on the ground. In fact, the Bf 109 was
notoriously difficult to take off and land, and many planes simply veered off or tipped over to one
side during a seemingly perfect run. To make things worse, the landing gear struts were comparatively
long. This left the nose pointing up at quite a steep angle with respect to the ground, making forward
visibility during taxiing virtually zero. These landing gear-related problems plagued the Bf 109
throughout its life, and accounted for a notable proportion of losses.

Another aspect of this construction technique was the use of a single box-spar in the wing, mounted near
the leading edge. Most planes of the era used two spars, near the front and rear, but the box was much
stiffer torsionally, and eliminated the need for the rear spar.

Another major difference was the much higher wing loading than the other designs. While the R-IV contract
called for a wing loading of less than 100 kg/m², Messerschmitt felt that this was unreasonable; with the
engines available to them, the fighter would end up slower than the bombers it was tasked with catching.

A wing generates two forms of drag, parasitic drag due to its form, and induced drag which is a side effect
of generating lift. The former dominates at high speeds, when the airflow hitting the wing causes drag
that rises with the square of the aircraft's speed. The latter dominates at lower speeds, where the lack
of airflow requires the wing to be angled into the airflow at a higher angle of attack. Since the fighter
was being designed primarily for high speed flight, a smaller wing would be optimized for high speed use.

The downside of such a trade-off is that low speed flight would suffer, the smaller wing would require
more airflow to generate enough lift to stay flying. In order to address this, the Bf 109 included
advanced high-lift devices on the wings, including automatically opening slats on the leading edge, and
fairly large camber-changing flaps on the trailing edge. When deployed, these devices effectively
increase the size of the wing, making it better at low speeds and high angles of attack.

Another drawback of the high wing-loading is that the plane would require more energy to maneuver. Given
the limited amount of power available, this effectively meant that the Bf 109 would not be able to turn
as tightly as other designs with larger wings. The high lift devices would offset this to some degree,
but they also increased drag and so slowed the plane further. Given that maneuverability was last on the
RLM's wish-list, Messerschmitt was certain the benefits outweighed the drawbacks.